Android 4.3 lets you pick and chose an app’s permissions, but the feature is hidden

We all know what happens when we install a new app from the Play Store. A scary looking dialog box comes up and tells you everything that app wants to do to your phone. It wants to read your emails, it wants to go on the internet, it wants to see your text messages. But we’re only human, and we’re all in a rush, so we tap next, next, and next again, because we really want to try out that new game everyone is talking about.

What if things were different? The folks at Android Police have discovered an application buried deep in Android 4.3 called “App Ops”. It’s hidden by default, and (oddly enough) you need to download another application to let you access it. Once you’ve done all that, you can go to any app on your phone and then start turning off permissions. Don’t want Facebook touching your GPS radio? No problem. Don’t want your ringtone downloader to see who you’ve called? Easy.

The fact that this is buried tells me that the feature either isn’t done yet or it’s meant for developers. It’s probably the former, however, since Google would have made a big stink about this during the Android 4.3 announcement earlier this week.

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